Civil infrastructure is the backbone of modern society; maintaining this infrastructure is
critical for a healthy society. Wireless smart sensors (WSSs) provide an effective means
to monitor the performance of buildings and bridges, with the goal of improving
maintenance practices, minimizing the costs of repair, and increasing public safety.
WSSs, traditionally powered by batteries, are limited in terms of the length of time they
can operate autonomously. The frequent need to change batteries can drive up
maintenance costs and diminish the advantage envisioned with WSSs. Efforts have been
made to minimize the power consumption of WSSs used for structural health monitoring
(SHM); however, only a limited number of alternative power supply options, such as
energy harvesting, have been used in full-scale SHM applications. This research develops
a solar energy harvesting system to provide power to the Imote2 WSS platform and
increases the long-term autonomy of wireless smart sensor networks (WSSNs). The
approach is validated on a cable stayed bridge in South Korea. Additionally, software
enhancements are introduced to allow sensor data to be stored in non-volatile memory,
potentially further enhancing the efficacy of WSSNs. This research has resulted in greater
overall autonomy of WSSNs.

Issue Date:

2010-05

Publisher:

Newmark Structural Engineering Laboratory. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.